


Gorilla Position

by daltonacademyfightclub



Category: Professional Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Inspired by Poetry, Literal Sleeping Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 11:37:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5783953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daltonacademyfightclub/pseuds/daltonacademyfightclub
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Why do you lie with your legs ungainly huddled,<br/>And one arm bent across your sullen, cold,<br/>Exhausted face? It hurts my heart to watch you,<br/>Deep-shadowed from the candle's guttering gold;<br/>And you wonder why I shake you by the shoulder;<br/>Drowsy, you mumble and sigh and turn your head...<br/><i>You are too young to fall asleep for ever;</i><br/><i>And when you sleep you remind me of the dead. </i></p><p>- Siegfried Sassoon, "The Dug-Out"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gorilla Position

Sometimes, Seth would lie awake in bed, eyes unfocused up at the ceiling as he thought. Roman almost always got his own bed, restless as he was, which left Dean with him in the other queen-size they were using for the night. Otherwise, everything else was shared.

Getting all three of them to sleep at the same time was difficult. Roman tried to tuck in early, often already in bed by the time Dean was just getting into the shower, and in the beginning, Seth wondered if Dean, wild-eyed and manic as he was, even _got_ anything out of sleeping. “Lights are out and earplugs are in at one,” Roman had ordered after they nearly missed their wake-up call on the fifth ring one morning, which would have set them back for almost two hours. “Other than that, I don’t care what y’all do.”

That turned out to be a big lie as time went on and the three of them grew closer. Roman got rid of the earplugs, Dean realized that the hot water would pretty much always last and he didn’t have to be a hero and wait for everyone else, and Seth stopped watching late-night TV until it was available to view online the next day. The system of sharing a hotel room was boring but efficient, and it worked.

“We didn’t get food,” Dean would usually pipe up from the backseat after they got out of the arena parking lot. “I want food, man.” And that’s how nights usually began.

Seth figured, by his own standards, that hotel nights typically ended once they were back out on the highway or at the airport and Dean was looking to get food again. He wasn’t sure which one he liked better, because both of them had their own merits.

Travel days were more interesting than hotel nights, because hotel nights were typically quiet, half-awake meandering before the lights went out, and travel days were filled with stories if it was just the three of them packed into a rented Toyota Camry. Dean was packed to the brim with tales from the indies about how he’d fallen through this, had stitches to fix that, and injuries that Seth would’ve rather not heard in the first place. Meanwhile, Roman had enough family members that literally any topic that was thrown his way - even “pudding”, which Seth had assumed would be a challenge - had a story behind it, sometimes so funny that they became inside jokes between the three of them later on.

But hotel nights were different, more relaxed. After shows, none of them particularly wanted to talk, not even after they’d won the tag titles and Dean’d won the United States strap on his own. All three of them - though especially Roman, for some reason that Seth could never put his finger on - were acutely aware that when they were not being filmed, there was no reason to perform anymore. No reason to act out.

It was that radio silence that kept the electricity, the invisible cords of connectedness, between them whole. Being comfortable in silence was something that Dean wasn’t good with with anyone else. When they’d had their first meeting backstage as a group, any pause at all had Dean bouncing his leg up and down strong enough for Seth and Roman to see out of the corner of their eyes. Seth remembered thinking in passing that he was going to strap Dean down to a chair every night after shows if this was how it was always going to be. Now, he couldn’t imagine _not_ seeing Dean pacing backstage, stopping once he saw him too.

“Why do you move so much, dude?” Roman asked Dean one day as they pulled away from a gas station in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, Indiana. “You’re fuckin’ wiggly.”

“Even the world’s gotta move to stay alive,” Dean answered without missing a beat, and Seth thought that, despite the fact that it was factually incorrect, he hadn’t heard something so profound in his life.

Sleeping with Dean was… an experience because of that. Seth had woken up to Dean’s legs intertwined with his or a stray arm thrown over his chest more often than not, and the nights where Dean wasn’t restless were the ones that Seth was. It just wasn’t normal.

“Dean,” he heard himself say, turning over to see Dean turned away and huddled up facing Roman’s bed. He jostled his shoulder, watching the outline of Dean shift forward. “Hey, buddy.”

There was a groan and shuffling, Dean turning his head slightly. “Leave me ‘lone,” he grumbled, throwing the arm that wasn’t propping his head up back at Seth. “‘M sleeping.” His arm stilled on Seth’s chest.

That was good enough for him. “Just making sure,” Seth whispered back, keeping himself on his side, looking at Dean’s naked back and visualizing the peachy scars from barbed-wire matches running up and down his spine. “You go on and sleep.”

And Seth did the same.


End file.
